Learning to Paint

Improving the painting techniques with the Fujimi 1/72 Stuka

I bought this 1/72 Fujimi Ju 87 Stuka kit some years ago,
because I wanted to have a training model, to practice painting, decaling
and weathering. I have no special interest in the Stuka, and that made it
to a perfect training object!

I decided beforehand to paint the model according to the Fujimi
instructions only, without trying to find a photo of the real aircraft. This
was a deliberate choice, to focus the work on the painting, decaling and
weathering, and not drown in research. For me this is unusual as I
advocate quite the opposite approach. Personally I think that too many
modellers build their models without trying to
find a photo of the actual aircraft they are building which sometimes
results in paint schemes which are way off the ones you can see on wartime
photographs.

Anyway, my model portrays a Stuka of the Geschwaderstab of Stukageschwader
3 (St.G3), flown by the Geschwaderkommodore Oberstleutnant Walter Sigel.
Hence the model's 'S7+AA' code. It was stationed in Derna, Libya in summer
1942 - or at least that's what Fujimi says!

Construction

The model generally fitted well with only minor construction problems
with the fit of the canopy parts. Although I tried really hard to build it as a
out-of-the-box
model, I could not resist a few small modifications. These included
adding an extra panel line to the spinner and a new landing light.

According
to the plan, I was rapidly getting to the painting stage.

A major preparation job was to mask the
canopy. I used adhesive aluminium foil, not Bare Metal Foil but Cheap
Chocolate Foil. Due to
the large number of panes in the Stuka's canopy, this masking consumed
many hours, but the end result looked really cool. The adjacent photo below shows the forward canopy covered in
foil. Also visible is some of the puttying and shimming during
construction.

Painting stage 1 (abortive)

Then the painting drama started. I started off with Humbrol matt
enamels. The base coat of a sort-of RLM65 turned out very grainy. I
decided to rub down to model with 1200 sandpaper, a very tedious job. And
because I sanded through the paint in some places, I had to repaint it.
More grainy paint. I then decided to continue with the top colors, and to
try to smooth out the grainy paint later with gloss clear coats. Next was
one of the greens, I don't recall whether it was 70 or 71. That paint
resulted in an even grainier surface, close to 300 sandpaper! The corners
between fuselage and wings were the worst. This was completely unacceptable,
and I put the model away. Months later I stripped the paint off the model
using NaOH (sodium hydroxide), and swore never to use matt Humbrol paints
again. Note that I had painted models successfully with Humbrol satin
paints before, and I did not expect problems of this magnitude with matt
paints. Perhaps I'll once learn a trick to avoid grainy paint.

Painting stage 2 (change of paint)

Perhaps a year later I bought some Model Master II enamels. These
semi-gloss paints turned out to spray very easily, and I took my stripped
Stuka out of the box. I had to mask the canopy again with adhesive aluminium
foil, since the masks had been damaged in the paint stripping
process. The masking was however different from the masking shown earlier.
In the mean time I had learned that part of the canopy framing was
internal. I therefore masked the panels in such a way that only the
external frames would receive camouflage colors. Contrary to common
practice of starting with the lightest color, I decided to paint the top
colors (70 and 71) first. I started with 71, and achieved a very nice
smooth paint coat. This made me very enthusiastic again! Finally a paint
that worked for me.

Then I spent
many hours on the masking of the splinter camo,
exactly following the Fujimi pattern. I laid down the pattern using Tamiya
tape. However, airbrushing at this point would result in a small ridge of
paint against the tape. Therefore I added another layer of tape exactly on
top of the first layer of tape, and lastly a third layer of tape which had
an overlap of some 0.5 millimeters. Only then I sprayed the RLM 70. With
the paint a mere 10 minutes old I removed the masking (I was so curious),
and found a very nice result. There was no paint ridge, and the ´hard
edge´ between the two colors was just a trifle ´soft edged´ to make it
look realistic. Definitely a technique I will use again. However, I was
surprised by the huge contrast between the two colors. Some color checking
later revealed that Model Master's RLM 70 and 71 deviate quite a lot from
accepted FS matches. Oh well. The photo shows the result of the painting.

Time for RLM 65. I used tape masking on the wings, and
Blu-Tack
sausages on the fuselage. The third paint layer went on pretty nice too,
and no bleeding from the dark colors underneath. So much for the standard
technique of starting with the lightest color, and ending with the darkest
color. I like these Model Master paints a lot, the colors matches less
though. Note that the wheels are still wrapped in aluminium foil.

The photo below shows the model after the bare European camouflage of
RLM 70/71/65 was applied. The contrast between the greens is way too
strong I believe, but it does show the splinter camo to advantage. The
canopy is still masked, and the left main gear spat was undergoing a small
repair. So far I was really happy with the progress, although the model
looked highly unrealistic at this stage.

At this point I decided to make things a little difficult. Somehow I
wanted to make the model show that the brown RLM79 spots were added
'in-theatre' over the existing markings. Question was how the ground crew
would have handled such a task. Would they have sprayed around existing
markings, or would they have taped them off? A study of East front winter
camouflages showed both techniques (here I go digging in my reference
books again). I decided to try to simulate spray
painting around the markings. Thus it was time to add most of the decals
now. First though I painted the white North African band. The band was masked and sprayed white.

Decals
stage 1 (a recovered failure)

Being completely unfamiliar with Fujimi decals, I first performed some
tests on a scrap model I had painted along with the Stuka. These tests
revealed a lot of problems. I tried combinations of Micro Sol, Micro Set,
Future, polishing the paint, and some more. Although Sol did seem to
soften the decals, they wouldn't pull into panel lines themselves.
'Helping' the decals with a needle worked, but also risked tearing the
decal. When I thought I had developed a technique that worked good enough,
I started with the wing crosses. The results were mediocre; they didn't
want to conform much to the surface, and adhesion was poor.

Next were the fuselage codes. These would cross numerous panel lines,
and I didn't want to take risks there. So I tried a new technique: cutting
the decal wherever it crossed a panel line. The cutting was difficult to
measure, but it worked; a technique to remember. However this decal
silvered very badly, despite all my precautions. The only solution was to
overpaint the affected areas with a tiny brush. I had only one decal left:
the fuselage code for the left side. And only then I found the solution
for the silvering problem: I wiped off the decal glue, and attached the
decal with Future. Finally it worked! But still I had to cut up the decal.
After drying, I filled in the cuts in the decal with black and blue paint
using a tiny brush. This improved the appearance a lot.

This left only a few decals. First I added Xtradecal swastikas to the
fin. Then the Werknummer was cut in two (horizontally) and added to the
fin tip. Fujimi's decals for the letters 'A' on the landing gear spats
were way too large, and I replaced them with A's from a 'ROYAL NAVY' decal
from an old Matchbox Lynx (I think). The only decals left off were the
"AA" markings on the left fuselage side, and "S7"
markings on the right side. These would be added after the RLM79 patches.
Finally I added a layer of Humbrol Satin clear (135) to blend in all the
decals. Despite all the problems it looked pretty good.

The photo
shows the Fujimi decals of the fuselage code and the Werknummer (both cut
in pieces), and the Xtradecal swastika that conformed using conventional
means (Micro Set and Sol). Note however that the photo was taken after
weathering and the painting of the RLM 79 patches.

Weathering stage 1 (abortive again)

I had planned to use pastels to weather this model. I knew about the
discolouring effect of subsequent clear coats, so I made some test samples
to judge the changes. Armed with that knowledge I went ahead. The first
try was way too subtle, and after a clear coat all traces of pastel had
disappeared. For the second try I mixed some pastels, and applied these
more liberally. A clear coat revealed that on RLM70 nothing was left of
the pastel powder, but on the RLM71 is looked like sh!t (literally). At
this point I promised myself I would never try it again; the technique had
worked brilliantly on my YF-23, but failed on the Bf 109, Me 163 and now
the Stuka.

Plan B was to achieve the desired 'anti-monochromatic finish' by using
paint. For this purpose I mixed the basic colors with all kinds of greys,
browns and greens, and painted (scrubbed) these on the model in a randomly
fashion. In some places the effect was too strong, and straight paint was
scrubbed over the affected areas. The decals were treated the same way,
which made them blend into the paint job considerably. Another layer of
Humbrol 135 was necessary to cancel out different degrees of glossiness,
and only then I was able to judge the result. It looked good enough,
better than my Me 163. The adjacent photo tries to capture the painting
technique, but it doesn't do a good job.

Painting stage 3 (largely succesful)

Time for the African patches! I was very curious to see how they would
change the model's appearance. However, a new complication had emerged:
the Humbrol 135 satin clear coats I had painted over the Model Master II
RLM colors showed very poor adhesion. Tamiya tape and even Humbrol Maskol
would lift it. The only solution I saw was the use Blu Tack sausages (as
originally intended) and mask the areas in between with aluminium foil,
instead of Maskol. The Maskol method would have been quick and easy, but
fitting pieces of foil cost me a lot more time. Anyway, to create the
'spraying around the markings' effect I had to apply the Blu Tack sausages
very carefully over the markings.

But when I removed them after spray
painting, it appeared I had grossly misjudged the underspray effect. The
wing crosses were now partially overpainted with RLM 79. Because the paint
hadn't cured fully yet, I was able to remove the larger part with a cotton
swab. It looked a little strange now. Even worse was the discovery that
the Blu Tack had removed part of the right fuselage cross. This decal had
silvered badly, and its adhesion must have been minimal. Luckily I located
the pieces of decal in the Blu Tack, removed them very carefully, and
attached them again with Future. The last item painted was the spinner
tip. Fujimi says it's RLM 79, but another source (checking references
again!) reported it was blue.
Since this was a Geschwader commander's aircraft, I decided to go for the
Geschwaderstab color, blue.

Decals stage 2 (I learned by now)

The last two decals, "AA" and "S7" were now added
on top of the RLM79 patches and the white fuselage band. Using the now
established decal technique, they went on perfectly. Again the cuts in the
decals were filled in with paint.

Weathering stage 2 (stalled due to lack of
ideas)

The fresh RLM 79 patches looked very unnatural now. Time to weather
them, and the complete RLM65 lower side, with the technique described
above. After that the model looked more like a real aircraft and less like
a toy model, so I was pretty satisfied. However, I wanted to add some more
life to the model, by adding signs of wear. This however I found not so
easy. Perhaps I lacked inspiration, but I couldn't think of more than some
chipping on the walkways, gun smoke (pastel), exhaust smoke (pastel), and
an attempt at chipping around some wing hatches. I also washed the model
in selected places (engine cowling, control surfaces, trim surfaces);
overall the engraved panel lines are so deep that they didn't need a wash
at all.

Painting the canopy (which went
problem-free)

The Stuka has a complicated canopy framing. Part of the frames are
external, and I had masked those that were in camouflage colors. The
rest of the frames are internal, and are either RLM02 or RLM66
(interior colors). I decided to use RLM02 for them, and brush paint
them on the canopy. However the Fujimi canopy did not really suit
itself to this approach; the 'internal' frame lines are as wide as the
external ones, so it looks kinda strange. Furthermore, the frame lines
of the top of the canopy are flush with engraved borders, while those
on the sides are raised. In the end it looked a little crappy, but it
was the best I could do.

I added the antenna mast, and superglued a stretched sprue antenna
to the mast and the fin. The heat of a smoking (blown out) match
tensioned it. I added two drops of white glue near the fin tip and
then painted the wire dark grey

The finals

Since I had decided to build the model straight out of the box, and
largely stuck to that plan, I ended up with a rather "boring"
model - it had
no displaced control surfaces, open canopy, or anything else. These days I
definitely want a model to tell a little story. To make the best of it, I
decided to put the model on a base.

And there it was, my seventh model. With it I achieved 99% of my initial ideas, which I
think makes a very good score. I entered the model
in the Dutch IPMS Nationals 2000,
where it received a third place in 1/72 category. So my painting exercise was successful after all.

n

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